Best energy savers

[Mary Fisher]

Do you mind that?

Mary>

[Staffbull]

Mind what? that a company has a product they engineered themselfes, patented it and are making an absolute fortune out of it. No not at all, let's hear it for Bill Gates while were at it :-)

[Staffbull]

one of the downfalls of the last house, 300 yr old cottage, tiny windows and lights on even on a summers day !!

[Ian Stirling]

/me passes Staffbull a 12" petrol disk cutter.

[Staffbull]

Woefully inadequate, walls were over 3ft thick !! and the stone was the hardest granite i've ever come across

[Dave Liquorice]

Lack of cash

and too much honesty, on the other hand... Anyway the companies employed for this work aren't interested in doing any but the bare minimum. I guess they might be presuaded to just leave the insulation and I'll fit it to my spec.

[Dave Liquorice]

Ta I will, what perecentage do you get or is it a fixed cash amount?

[Dave Liquorice]

Lucky you. 6 strip lights, 16 CFls and 27 tungstens at a quick mental tour round the place. Most of the lights that are regulary used are CFL. As the other parts are refurbished and come into use the tungstens will be replaced by CFLs.

[Ian Stirling]

Fortunately granite seems moderately rare in this house. There are occasional lumps of it, it varies between quite hard sandstone, quite soft sandstone, 'I can't believe it's not sand', with a little granite, and quite a lot of brick.

And of course the occasional timber window lintel, bricked up...

The walls are about 50cm thick in most of it - though I was surprised to find significant areas only double skinned brick.

It's interesting what you find when you rip out the plasterboard.

I think it was reconstructed from a largely ruined stone double cottage, with little more than the gable ends standing, around 1950, largely in brick/cement, with the bricks plastered. Then maybe 1960, some very poorly fixed plasterboard was put in.

In 1980 or so, it was refurbished, ripped back to the bare walls, and larger windows with concrete lintels put in, as well as being knocked through into one cottage, and plasterboard with a suspended floor put in.

Now I'm in the process of ripping out all the old plasterboard and actually insulating the walls.

[Staffbull]

We decided to sell the old place as the only parking was on the road outside and the rear garden was only 25ft X 25ft. I've got space out front for four cars now and a 100ft X 70ft garden after building the extension. Drove past the old place not long ago and they've put double yellows outside as it's on a junction, I'm glad we sold !!

[Staffbull]

I think it's around three quaters of the cost, the local council will put you in touch with some organisation that dishes em out, it's a different one here in Wales.

Off the top of me head cavity wall insulation needed you to stump up about =A3140, wich aint bad really, loft insulation was less. I'm getting the lot done for nowt at the mo as I'm unemployed at the mo

[Matt]

And then let themselves be bought by the Japs. Yet another British success story sold off to the highest bidder.

[Lobster]

Is that legal?

[Dave Liquorice]

The bathroom light, traditional white glass globe, fully sealed as it's a bathroom is the only CFL lamp that I have had to replace, twice, due to failure. This is over about 4 or 5 years, last replacement was about 2 years ago. The bathroom light tends to get left on from 1800 to midnight.

So yes a sealed fitting will shorten the life but you'll still have the energy saving. Replace a 60W tungsten with a 11W CFL costing 80p more and the power saving will have made up the extra capital cost after 200hrs (ish) or a month at 6hrs/day.

[Lobster]

When I once looked into getting grants, I found that you could only get money towards the cost of employing a council/government approved contractor to fit the insulation. Even with the grant, the net cost to me would have been a hell of a lot more than diy'ing, which is what I ended up doing.

David

[Mary Fisher]

Sounds like Cornwall!

Mary

>

[Mary Fisher]

I don't think They can have heard of it :-)

Don't tell Them or They'll slap a notice on it.

Mary

[Mary Fisher]

That's the best reason I've ever heard! Good for you.

Mary

[Mary Fisher]

If you invented something and sold it and made a lot of money I don't suppose you'd mind.

It's only when someone else does it that people complain.

Mary

>

[Huge]

Hmm. I think I'll give this a go, 'cos it's a pain to change, too.

Thanks all!